I would hope that Tom's intent by publishing this was simply one of giving us a warm fuzzy and renewed hope for mankind during trying times, but it's clear from his later posts that it's simply another attempt to cast dispersion at the media and those that have worried about the failures.

Warm fuzzies were the primary motivation, but I also wanted to make the point that these acts of kindness and outright American generosity were not as rare as some people want us desperately to believe. I spent some time in the past doing this more often.

It isn't media people and others who are "worried about the failures" that I have trouble with. Everyone I know is worried about them, including me. It's the people who literally lust after the failures that bug me. There's one or two of them on this board, and a lot more elsewhere.

"One horrific atrocity of rape or murder in Iraq" may indeed "overwhelm a ton of these stories," but that is because that one incident will be broadcast extensively to the exclusion of the others. There's a purpose behind that, and it isn't just what sells the most newspapers.

It does not change the basic fact that there is still, at the end of it all, one atrocity, and a ton of the other stories.